


1921

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: Epistolary [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Epistolary, Fluff, Happy Ending, Intimacy, Longing, M/M, Mentions of War, Nostalgia, Romance, Slow Burn, mentions of bodily injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-18 19:46:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4718288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Sincerest thanks for your prompt response. Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience that this confusion has caused you, as I’m certain there are more pressing matters for you to attend than sorting out someone else’s misdirected mail.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>In 1921, a letter is misdirected to Dr. Hannibal Lecter from one Mr. Will Graham. Amused and charmed, Hannibal writes back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The First Letters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kinneykid3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinneykid3/gifts).



> Written for our beloved [kinneykid](http://kinneykid.tumblr.com/), who requested a story in which Will and Hannibal fall in love through letters, and beta'd by the intrepid [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/).

  
  


26 September, 1921

Dear Doctor Fell,

With appreciation to our mutual acquaintance Doctor Bloom for the letter of introduction, I write to you with interest in requesting your presence at Hertford College, University of Oxford, at such a time that is agreeable to you and with consideration as to your previously scheduled engagements. I believe that the students in my class would benefit greatly from your insight into Dante’s _Inferno_ and the politics of the period that shaped that work. It would be my pleasure to realign my currently scheduled lectures so as to allow for the sharing of your particular knowledge on the subject.

Forgive my brevity, as I see no need to utilize more of your time than I already have, but know that I eagerly await news of your availability, if my suggestion is agreeable to you.

Respectfully yours,  
William Graham  
Lecturer, Faculty of History, Hertford College, University of Oxford

  
  


6 October, 1921

Mr. William Graham,

Although I am well-versed in Dante - a personal interest - I’m afraid I cannot acquiesce to your request, as I am not Doctor Fell. Our postal workers are still, it seems, rather inundated with letters regarding medical care and inquiries into the well-being of their loved ones, and the term ‘doctor’ loosely applies to anyone within a hospital, rather than an academic.

I sincerely apologize that your letter did not find its proper recipient, and hope the next time finds it safe in the hands of the man who needs it.

Until then, should you need someone to lecture on Dante’s _Inferno_ , I would gladly step in. Perhaps another doctor’s perspective could shed light on some of his more convoluted metaphors.

Respectfully,  
Dr. H. Lecter  
Physician, The National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, Bloomsbury, London

  
  


18 October, 1921

Dr. Lecter,

Sincerest thanks for your prompt response. Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience that this confusion has caused you, as I’m certain there are more pressing matters for you to attend than sorting out someone else’s misdirected mail.

My thanks as well for your kind offer of visiting Oxford as a guest lecturer. While I’ve no doubt that your personal interest in Dante’s works is both genuine and studious, perhaps your particular talents would be better utilized by the Faculty of Medicine. I would be glad to prepare an introductory letter if you seek lecturing opportunities better suited to your area of expertise; otherwise I wish you well in your endeavors.

Regards,  
William Graham  
Lecturer, Faculty of History, Hertford College, University of Oxford

  
  
  


29 October, 1921

Mr. William Graham,

I appreciate you taking my jest regarding appearing as a guest lecturer with such grace. Perhaps one day my work will find me in Oxford. Perhaps when the students at the University College grow sick of my humor and ask me politely to retire.

And thank you for your concern regarding my workload. Though we have many patients with various afflictions in the hospital, the processes by which we work towards healing them are slow and take time. The mind is a potent well of possibilities, both positive and negative, and some of the things these young men have seen at war have nestled deep within the psyche and grown malignant.

Is Oxford as rife with such mental damage as London is? Years on, and still a struggle for recovery, for those who saw the worst and protected the best?

I do not mean to impose with my letters, I apologize in advance if I am. I am merely curious about a town so near yet so foreign to me - I have not long been in England.

I shall take no offence should you choose not to reply to my letters henceforth.

Respectfully,  
Dr. H. Lecter  
Physician, The National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, Bloomsbury, London


	2. The November Letters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It is curious how people forget that those who teach also serve as those who raise, is it not? Perhaps it seems as though your students hardly appreciate the intervention, I know that I, too, took great pleasure when I was younger in evading my tutors, and remember every humiliating incident of being found in the bushes the next morning._

9 November, 1921

Dr. Lecter,

I hope you’ll not think me negligent in my delayed response. The battery of days between Halloween and Guy Fawkes are especially trying. When I’ve not been rescuing students out of Oxford’s sundry shrubbery, their robes smeared with sick, I’ve been trying to deter attempted ignitions of these hallowed halls by way of illicit firecrackers.

I digress. Or perhaps I do not. Your inquiry into the well-being of our student body is appreciated, sincerely. The undergraduates that presently occupy my time as occasional lecturer, full-time nanny, were spared the front by way of either their youth or their parents’ money’s intervention. This, perhaps, explains their interest in explosives, in that they were fortunate enough only to have encountered them in bright colors and whizzing noises.

There are certainly those here who were not so fortunate, but who still carry the battles beneath their skin as if their memories were shrapnel. It is by some deliberate twist of Fate’s threads, I think, that I return your missive only two days before Remembrance Day. Has it truly only been three years?

I am not much older than those I oversee in my College, but it is a wonder that they have made me feel as though I am by decades their senior rather than only years. Perhaps therein lies a medical anomaly for you to discover. You mentioned students of your own - are you engaged in lecturing at the hospital?

I feel no obligation to continue my writing to you, but do so for the pleasure of corresponding with one to whom I owe nothing, having made apologies for my initial inconveniences. You, neither, owe me your time or letters - please do not feel as though you do.

Regards,  
William Graham  
Hertford College, University of Oxford

18 November, 1921

Mr. Graham,

It is curious how people forget that those who teach also serve as those who raise, is it not? Perhaps it seems as though your students hardly appreciate the intervention, I know that I, too, took great pleasure when I was younger in evading my tutors, and remember every humiliating incident of being found in the bushes the next morning.

I do have students of my own, interns from the College seeking to become doctors themselves. Few of them, too, have seen war, and are lucky for it. They learn in the aftermath, where they have time to suture, have clean tools and enough supplies. They did not live through the school of war, as you and I did, though we can hardly fault them that. They will grow with lessons we never had, just as we will attempt to pass on our own and have our students dismiss them entirely.

But no matter.

Were you able to enjoy the fireworks outside of your full-time nannying duties? London lit at night as though it were day, but beyond the beauty and wonder of it, I found myself on call sedating patients who could not handle the sounds of explosion so similar to shells. It was a bittersweet day, in truth. A lesson and a reminder to find the good within the bad, but to remember, too, to never take a single thing for granted.

Has it started snowing in Oxford? Do you see the snow white and clean at least before the filth of industry swallows it whole?

I await eagerly for your correspondence, and shall not hold you accountable for any delays. In that, we can both blame the postal service.

Regards,  
Dr. H. Lecter  
NHND, Bloomsbury, London

25 November, 1921

Dr. Lecter,

It may please you to know that your letter has only just arrived, and already I reply. We draw precariously near to the final day of term, a week and one day hence, and you’ve provided me a means by which to distract myself from the increasingly frantic pacing all across the floors of the College. Would that they’d believe me when I tell them that most of them will perform admirably on their papers, but to phrase it with ‘most’ seems to inspire more alarm than comfort.

One must find their amusements where they can.

To address your previous point, while I admire the craftsmanship of fireworks displays, I am more in the company of your patients as to my enjoyment of them. Were you a surgeon then, or did you serve in some other capacity? Of course, it is entirely possible that you were bystander to it and still besieged by war’s effect. You mentioned in a prior letter that your arrival in London is relatively recent, and so a surgeon seems fitting; forgive me if my assumptions are incorrect entirely, or if you’d rather not dwell on such matters. Trust me when I convey my sympathy to the sentiment.

We are blessed to be far enough from London’s choking smog to avoid most of the ills of industry. The sky today was very blue indeed, though there is the damp, crisp promise of snow on the air - to be sure, the quads and crenulations alike will soon be covered. I already miss the wisteria that grows alongside the College in spring, threatening to pour forth its blossoms through the windows and spread across the commons rooms.

I will send a postcard when I am able, of the College where I teach and reside; you may imagine it as having snow upon it, if you like.

With thanks for the happy distraction, and regards,  
William Graham  
Hertford College, University of Oxford


	3. The December Letters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You have me nostalgic, Mr. Graham. I suddenly miss Parisian evenings._

4 December, 1921

Mr. Graham,

I fear this will reach you after the Christmas period, in which case, I wish you a merry Christmas, and hope the New Year brings with it good tidings and new opportunities. The hospital does not ever sleep, and we meet seasons as they come, one after the other, decorations, when appropriate, changing in the windows. There is a large pine in one of the indoor courtyards, it smells divine. The children from the east ward spent the day decorating it to their hearts’ content.

It is quite a sight, I wish there were a way for me to show you.

I am sorry to hear that you, too, were affected by the shelling. It is a terrifying thing, not being able to distinguish in your mind one hell from another’s entertainment. I remember the shelling. I was never in the trenches, but my work had me near enough the front to hear. I was a field doctor, then. I refined my skill in surgery once I came to London - before then I was stationed near Paris, and studied there.

I would appreciate the post card. I did, for a time, in my youth collect them. From anywhere I could find. Some kind soldiers that passed through the camp gifted me several that I have safely stored. Some were empty, others were addressed, others still never finished.

I digress. You have me nostalgic, Mr. Graham. I suddenly miss Parisian evenings.

I look forward to hearing from you in the New Year.

With great regard and fondest wishes,  
Dr. H. Lecter  
NHND, Bloomsbury, London

12 December, 1921

Dear Dr. Lecter,

Now we truly begin a game of roulette with the nefarious postal service. Your letter arrived far before the holiday for which you’ve so kindly sent your good tidings, and we shall wait and see whether or not my happy wishes for your own arrive to you in time. It is a risky endeavor, to be certain. Will this letter be lost among countless care packages, never to be seen again? Will it arrive in mid-January, with you bereft of the meager benefit of a stranger’s Christmas tidings? Only time and His Majesty’s post will tell.

Beyond a postcard sent - which may or may not arrive before or after this letter - and my wishes for your happy holidays among the children of your hospital, you have my gratitude. Neither was I in the trenches, but near enough to them that I required the services of a field hospital. It is thanks to the attending doctors and the skillful nurses there that I survived, and with my leg still attached. Most injured as I was were not so fortunate, left without limbs, whereas I rely only on a cane (which, in truth, I still resist most days, preferring instead a rather stalwart English limp replete with accompanying stoicism and stiff upper lip). Will you have leave on Christmas, at least, to see your family? I do hope so, much as I sense an extraordinary devotion to your work above all else.

I was not stationed near to Paris, but visited it once. An extraordinary city that did wonders to rejuvenate the flagging spirits of our company with reminders of life beyond the clatter of machine-gun fire and menacing hiss of gas. I have never been drunker in my life, nor, I think, happier. I suppose that precarious nearness to one’s seemingly imminent demise has some bearing on that.

A month or so remains before the students return for Hilary, and I intend to make the most of their absence. I imagine I will miss their bluster and noise, ideas freshly sprung and not yet ground into orderly fashion by the outside world, but not for a few weeks more. Should you find yourself in Oxford, I am likely to be reclined in the library with a substantial measure of spirits, neglecting to read and instead attempting to draw Simpkins, our College’s resident cat, into my favor.

Very happy wishes to you and yours,  
William Graham  
~~Hertford College~~ Bodleian Library, Oxford

 

28 December, 1921

It seems your postcard slipped through before Christmas, and your letter came several days after. A curious turn of fate, now I fear I owe you a Christmas present come next year.

Christmas here came and went, many patients had visitors and the wards were busy. Many of us found ourselves spoiled by kind relatives bringing us ginger cookies and brightly packaged chocolate. It was, in truth, a lovely sight to see so many people here to celebrate such a joyous occasion with their loved ones. Those who did not have family were not left out. Fewer times of the year I see such kindnesses than over Christmas.

I am happy to hear that your injuries did not take your quality of life from you. The English, I’ve found, have always been wonderfully stubborn, almost to a fault, it is quite extraordinary. And in truth, the more you walk without the cane, the less you will need to rely on it. I fully support your stubbornness in this case, William, and would encourage it further.

I have good memories from Paris, very good memories. And I agree that the city itself was cause for most of my hangovers and several days of entirely uninhibited happiness.

Do you wonder if you and I had ever crossed paths there?

Best of wishes for your cat taming, I hear the endeavor is rather like attempting to hold water in a sieve, but should certainly fill dull winter months with genuine amusement. 

Until the next year, Mr. Graham.

Warm wishes,  
Dr. H. Lecter  
Somewhere in the midst of sleety Bloomsbury, London


	4. The January Letters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Your last letter has struck resonance in me and brought to life memories that I had, to my great mistake, thought long tucked away into the folly of youth and wartime, the latter of which invariably complicates - and is complicated by - the former._

  


  


6 January, 1922

Dear Dr. Lecter,

With only ten days remaining until Hilary term begins, three until the students come up again, Oxford remains in a state of stasis entirely appropriate for the season. The medieval church tower in the center square either does not know or does not care for the approaching swell of life that will soon carry voices to its peak. One can feel, though, among the ancient streets, a reverberance beneath the snow that muffles sound to a whisper. Spring is coming, with it wisteria and warmth. I am eager to again feel sun on my skin. For reasons inexplicable beyond the above described, I feel an immense anticipation for what this year brings with it, but I am glad to know that it begins with you.

And I am troubled, not in ill-spirits, and not only because of your portentous words as to the taming of cats. I delay with intention now and no doubt unforgivably poor grammar, the product of too much drink and too little sleep. Your last letter has struck resonance in me and brought to life memories that I had, to my great mistake, thought long tucked away into the folly of youth and wartime, the latter of which invariably complicates - and is complicated by - the former.

I did not wonder before if we had met, and now I can wonder little else. Your experiences in Paris, though we veil our words and dismiss them as nostalgia, echo my own experience acutely. Though it raises the question as to how - since a mere curiosity of fate seems both irrational and unlikely - you came into possession of my first misdirected letter, please be certain in your reply that fate does not move again to intercept your response.

Let me ask you only, before I am spurred by heady spirits to say more, what is your first name, Doctor?

Will Graham  
Oxford

  


  


14 January, 1922

Dear Mr. Graham,

Please know that none of this began as deliberate deception. In truth, your letter found me by the mistake of the postal service, and in truth, upon seeing your name as the sender my curiosity got the better of me, and I found myself prying open an envelope meant for another.

In 1916, we saw many companies pass through Paris, some from the mainland, others just off it. We remembered the British the most, they were rowdier, happier than most of the troops in or near Paris, and it was welcome to have your soldiers lighten the moods on the weekends they had leave. 

One such evening, I found myself bewitched by blue eyes and a crooked grin, terrible French and the taste of warm anise on his lips. We communicated through hand gestures and smiles, I had no English for him, and he no French for me, but language was hardly a barrier. I still hate, to this day, that I let him leave without an address to which to write. I had hoped he had made it through the war, as his company did not pass through Paris again.

William Graham was all he left me with, and a warmth in my stomach that has not died, not in the many winters since then.

I hope this letter reaches you well, William, and that you are happy. I hope fate sees fit to bring a letter back to me, from you, once more, if only just the once.

Sincerely and kindly,  
Dr. Hannibal Lecter  
Bloomsbury, London

  


  


20 January, 1922

Dear Hannibal,

If only I could write as fast as my heart is beating. If only I had words - any words at all - to describe the effect your letter has had on me. That you have had on me. Then and now, do you see how quickly my language falls to ruin? Just as my French did then, broken words that amounted to no more than how to ask for a drink and certain street names where my company slept those few, those very few nights that we spent our leave in Paris.

I owe a letter of thanks to His Majesty for the constant mistakes of his postal service. I owe a great deal more to fate or God or whatever forces have conspired to allow me, now, to write to you, there, and know that the same fingers that once interlocked between my own now hold this missive and that the lips against which I once poured every last drop of love’s wine now form these scattered thoughts aloud.

Your English has much improved. My French has not.

With what other confessions can I embarrass myself now, not knowing your inclination towards me or whether I incriminate myself against our friendship by violating these boundaries? I will confess that I looked for you, as soon as I was physically able and the war ended. With only your first name, I yet found where you had been only to discover that you had gone. I will confess that I wept then, with far more pain than I weep now, for now it is with relief that you are alive, and well, and whole, and happy.

Will you be my confessor? Shall I tell you every memory that still keeps me awake at night and every thought of you that has for years lingered in the periphery of my reality as a pale ghost? I have already said so much, a shameful amount, not knowing whether you wish to hear it or not.

One more then, and if they are the last words you choose to read by my hand then I will be happy for having been able to say them to you by the written word in lieu of spoken:

I have missed you. God! I have missed you.

Yours faithfully,  
Will Graham

  


  


29 January, 1922

Dear Will.

Oh, Will. 

Nights upon nights I lay awake and listened to shells drop and hoped, with every fibre of my being, that you were not injured or killed by them. Day after day I hoped not to see you brought in to my tent bleeding and dying, and not once were you, and then I feared that you were in another, where I could not reach and could not help.

I weep now, and I have never been happier to.

Forgive me my hands shaking and ruining the page with smudged ink and fingerprints.

Do you know, I still remember you when I think of absinthe? Never once fond of the drink but it had passed the bar just as you did, while I sat there, and it was that smell that made me look up, out of some unknown pull and cloying curiosity. And that’s when I saw you, laughing and raucous with the rest of the company, pink-cheeked and glasses too large for your face, held together with a piece of tape in the middle.

Do you remember, that it was you who nodded? Just once. And once was enough. I would have followed any instruction you gave me. And you nodded. So I went. Forced to keep my eyes from you for the time it took to get outside, for the moments that crept by like marbles through treacle until I heard your company laugh you encouragingly out the door.

I did not think you would forgive me the kiss.

I did not think you would forgive my absence. 

I will beg it regardless. Your forgiveness and your patience with the postal service. Perhaps there is a telephone at the university? We have several at the hospital but they are rarely used.

Know, Will, please know, I never stopped hoping I would meet you again.

Yours always,  
Hannibal Lecter


	5. The February Letters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _When I stepped out to the street I thought you were gone. Perhaps I had imagined the scarlet glint of low lights reflected in your eyes, perhaps I had imagined tilting my head towards the door and watching as you stood, elegant and collected and altogether perfect. And then you caught my hand._
> 
> _Do you remember?_

  


  


5 February, 1922

Dear Hannibal,

Has it only been five years since I saw you?

Since I more than saw you, since I knew you in ways that I have never known another before or since. It could be yesterday or this morning for as well as I remember it, there is not a part of you unfamiliar to me - more than my own body, now, crippled and scarred, I remember yours resplendent. The narrow smile in your eyes that dared no further, the thicket of hair upon your chest. The mole just inside your right thigh and oh - oh so much more than that.

I still taste the sugared anise of that miserable drink when I think of you, and though I never loved the taste of licorice in youth, forgive me sounding like a schoolboy smitten when I tell you that I have sought it out more than once to revel in the memories that it brings forth. Through clouds of cigarette smoke in that crowded bar, I saw you. Only you. Our eyes met lingering for a heartbeat longer than they should have and I knew and you knew, too, what it meant. I told my mates that I was going to turn in early - they didn’t believe me, they cheered thinking I was going to a brothel.

When I stepped out to the street I thought you were gone. Perhaps I had imagined the scarlet glint of low lights reflected in your eyes, perhaps I had imagined tilting my head towards the door and watching as you stood, elegant and collected and altogether perfect. And then you caught my hand.

Do you remember?

You pulled me stumbling to the narrow street beside the tavern and you held my face in your hands as I pushed you to the wall. In the gasping ensnarement of our kiss, I found myself in limbo, caught between my own doubt that you surely could not be real and the sensation of your tongue against my own. We didn’t speak, we couldn’t have even had our languages been in synchronicity. You gave me a look that even as I write these words - has it been five years? - forces me to stifle suspect sounds and allow them to prickle my skin to goosepimples instead.

I would have gone anywhere at that moment.

I will call you by phone, tell me only when and where. Isn’t it a funny thing that we spoke so little then, and all I can imagine now is hearing the sound of your voice again?

Yours entirely,  
William Graham

  


  


14 February, 1922

Will,

I have become as a child, waiting every morning for the mail and seeking through it for a letter from you. I am glad I thought to telegram you the phone number, I could not have waited the days it would have taken by letter.

Your voice, Will. It was like falling back into that creaking bed in the house in Montmartre, just hearing you breathe so near that I could almost touch you. Do you know, you still laugh when you’re nervous? A breathy little thing that you try to hide behind a hand, or a wrinkling of your nose, and you look so beautiful every time you do.

I wish the call had lasted an eternity, the things I could say to you! The things I still shall!

And yet, despite that, the things I could not. Not through the public phone system. I could not tell you that I thought so often of how heavy you were against me when you lifted me from the floor and pressed my back to the wall in our room. I could not tell you that I still remember the heat between your legs as I wrapped my own around you and pressed forward, long deliberate rubbing until you dropped your hand where I wanted it. I could not tell you that I had never felt more loved, more known, more worshipped, than when you bared me and I bent for you, and felt your fingers so intimately close against me. Within me.

I could not tell you then. I will write it to you here.

I ache for you as I have not allowed myself to for years. I miss you more cruelly for the fact that you are so close, and neither of us have time to take away. But know if it takes us until the next snowfall, if it takes years more yet, I will wait.

I have waited.

For you, I would wait a lifetime.

Yours lovingly,   
Hannibal

  


  


25 February, 1922

I yield all manner of formality, I yield any ability that has ever been granted me to shape words into eloquence. Forgive me that, it has taken every fibre of strength in me not to write paeans to you the moment I set the phone back to its cradle.

Your accent, Hannibal, your accent! Weeks have passed since I’ve heard it and still it rings in me sweeter than church bells. You undo me through the simplest words, no more than a ‘hello Will’ to nearly shatter my resolve into splinters in front of the entire faculty. It isn’t French, not entirely, it’s something else and I know not what and I realize how little I know of you at all and all at once how much I wish to know of you.

Everything, Hannibal, I want to know everything. To trade in the wisdom of our bodies for that of mouths that not only kiss but speak and ears that hear not only breath but words and never in my life have I felt so maddened with fascination for another as I feel for you. Tell me in your next letter how you have come to be here, from whence, tell me again that you have missed me and make me feel less the boy who loved you during wartime and more the man who loves you now.

Hopelessly. Entirely. Completely and with abandon I will surely come to question once this letter is posted, and spend days in agony awaiting your reply that will - as you once conveyed with lips leaving marks against my skin and fingernails raking down my back - ease me again into knowing that there is nothing that could be more right than this.

You intoxicate me now as wildly as you did then. Bathed in morning sun, I realized upon watching you sleep beside me that it was not drink that dizzied me but the glint of light golden in your hair, the petals of your lips parted to allow a whispered sigh as you drew my arm tighter around you. Any reason left within me fled when you pressed your back against my chest and your hips against mine and sought me out, hardly waking but knowing that part of me was already risen for you. The bed creaked, shrill, every time we moved. I laughed against your shoulder and watched you grin, lashes resting still against your cheek, fluttering soft as feathers when I slid my hand across the coarse curls on your chest and followed their pathway down between your legs.

I hope you will not think less of me to know how sincerely in that moment I considered dereliction of duty, how hourly after I considered desertion. How I wanted nothing more than to stay with you, inside you, just like that and let the war rage without us. I did not know you were to be a doctor so soon; our company was tended to only by English surgeons, and the French went to the French. What different paths our lives might have taken had I woken from the shelling to see you above me instead.

What difference does it make when we find ourselves whole now, and so near?

The Boat Race takes place on the first of April this year, and though I normally decline the festivities for the sake of my own patience, I cannot imagine it now. The damage would be unfathomable were I to miss it. Hannibal, I will be in London on the first of April. Will you see me then?

Yours,  
Will


	6. The March Letters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It led me to you. To our sweaty mornings in the attic, dusty window open as wide as it could go to let whatever humid breeze in that flew by, wafting the smell of freesias around us. To our slow consummation in the evenings, a worship of skin on skin and hair and hands and lips and tongues and cocks so close. Do not think less of me that as our hours grew shorter, more and more I sought the English words to ask you to stay with me. I am glad, now, that I have learned them._

  


  


6 March, 1922

Sweet Will,

You know not what thoughts of your voice do to me, now that I have heard it again. It would be improper, ungentlemanly to tell you, and yet you fill me with such life. Just the very thought of you, of your subtle little laugh, your sharp humor and quick wit. The way your voice coils around my name like silk - it always has, even in Paris. I tried to emulate it, tried to repeat it to myself once you were gone, but it was never the same.

It was never like you spoke it to me. Like one speaks the Rosary, a worship so pure I shiver at the thought. How I had hoped, for so many years, that I had remained in your memory as you did in mine. How I wonder now, that I ever considered that I could not have.

I have missed you. I have missed you. I have _missed_ you, my dear Will. I will repeat it on every page if I must, until I no longer have to say so, until you are in my arms and I can whisper sweeter things to you, hold you against me and relearn you all over again.

I did not grow up in France, my family is from Lithuania. I have not spoken to them often, my parents, though proud of my choice to study medicine, were not supportive of my other endeavors, and seek often to lure me home for a more stoic and proper life that I am avoiding with every breath that leaves me. My sister is in school, now, no longer the little thing that had to live through the horrors of war. She tells me in her letters that she wants to be a nurse. I tell her that I would trust no one more at my bedside were I ill.

I moved to Paris to study, aided by my uncle - a man himself rather unconventional, and a good friend, now that I have grown enough to appreciate it. I had finished studying not long after you left, and I volunteered immediately for the front as a medic. Never once do I regret my decision. It was bravery, yes, but more than that. There is a sense of right, a sense of honor in doing something for the country you call your own, for the family you care for miles and miles and oceans away. Never do I regret it for that.

And you.

And you, Will. It led me to you. To our sweaty mornings in the attic, dusty window open as wide as it could go to let whatever humid breeze in that flew by, wafting the smell of freesias around us. To our slow consummation in the evenings, a worship of skin on skin and hair and hands and lips and tongues and cocks so close. Do not think less of me that as our hours grew shorter, more and more I sought the English words to ask you to stay with me. I am glad, now, that I have learned them.

I will see you in London, Will, on April first, upon the Hammersmith Bridge. Already I count the days.

Yours, simply yours,  
Hannibal

  


  


18 March, 1922

Dearest,

The students are pleased by my enthusiasm, typically lacking, for the Boat Race. Even now my excitement is so entire that I write to you over breakfast. I have before me a fried egg on toast, baked beans and bacon beside, all congealing uneaten, though I have made short work of several cups of coffee. This morning a student told me that my examinations have become less fraught, and while I admire the cheek of his saying so, I cannot help but hold you solely accountable for my loss of renown as a very stern tutor.

Lithuania! How extraordinary! And a sister! An uncle as well, and parentage. Such necessities of birth as even parents are in your context a fascination. Had you told me you sprung wholecloth from the heavens, I would have believed it, and found it no more extraordinary.

My mother died when I was very young, too young for me to have known her. My father found himself in good employ overseeing ship repairs, and his age has little slowed him from his capabilities in working that job, still. Presently he is in Hull, and we see each other when we are able. He cares for my dog, Winston, who I found as little more than fluff and mud while afield in France, and who accompanied me not only then but upon my return home. It is rather a travesty that cats are celebrated residents of our Colleges, but dogs are disallowed.

Though I had by then begun my study at Oxford - a commoner, with no particular prestige or money behind the Graham name - when Blighty entered the war I saw a means to shed the shackles of academia for a time, and volunteered. I learned field repair and took to it quickly, sprawled in the mud beneath the engines of transport vehicles, menacing their motors back to fighting form. All things considered, I was very happy, though certainly you saw me at my most uncouth - smeared with grease, a bent cigarette keeping back the curses that spilled forth as readily as breathing.

And still you knew. And still you loved. As did I from the moment our eyes held, and all manner of revelry fell aside in favor of your chest pressed against my own and your heels hooked at the small of my back. You with your careless sweep of honey-dark hair, cheekbones so sharp it is a wonder I did not cut my mouth upon them when I kissed beneath the endless night of your eyes. In a suit cut to perfection, rich violet and chrysanthemum green, you were resplendent, a rare orchid sprung up in the sooty streets of Paris, unapologetic for your beauty. Never before had I seen such a creature as you, and never have I since.

On the morning we returned to duty, I told you that I would return to you. I tried to tell you, anyway, though my French was (and remains) so poor I probably sounded as though I were trying to ask directions. It was my every intention to return. I knew with the certainty of lovelorn youth that I lived for nothing but to see you again. And as with all childish folly, it soon turned awry. It was a year after our separation, while repairing a jammed machine gun through the oil-slick haze of my gaspirator, that they began to shell us. I was lucky that it was only my leg injured, but the shrapnel shred was significant enough that I was pulled away still attempting to unjam that miserable machine. I was sent home, for convalescence, and the rest you know.

Hannibal, I am not prone to hyperbolic extravagance, so believe me when I say that nightly, nightly since Paris, even in the depths of morphine-stupor, I thought of you. Shall I tell you the effect that such nighttime visitations of your memory have had on me? Inappropriate, certainly, for breakfast talk but I'm sure you can imagine, if not sympathize. Hands do wander, don't they?

I had only, before you, known such comforts with those of our predilection in the direst of drunken states, such as spirits give an excuse the next morning for such unconscionable behavior (though let me tell you, Oxford is rife with such beautiful depravities, and all of us in denial of it). Never before had I allowed it as more than physical - firm rutting with amenable companions only for lack of women, certainly, or so I would have had myself believe. Never until you, who made me see that I not only wished for nothing else, but no one else.

I do hope that you are proud of yourself.

I wait for you upon the bridge already in spirit and soon will in form. I will be in my dark blues, beneath a suit of black, undoubtedly hunched upon my cane - a far less lovely figure than you allege me to have been in Paris. Glasses, still, though my hair has grown to impertinent length from when you saw me in the service.

It pains me to say this, but we must be cautious. Both our reputations and careers are at stake, and in truth there is no need to risk exposure - it is, I hope, the first meeting of many. Even a handshake, an embrace between old friends, will be enough to send me reeling, and if I lean to kiss you I trust you to stop me. By then I will have certainly been sleepless for many days preceding, and poorly fed for desire to consume nothing but you.

Soon. Soon.

With love,  
Will

  


  


27 March, 1922

My Will, 

Less than a week stands between us, now, and to think! Neither of us imagined that we would have this again, let alone so soon! I find myself sleepless already, my colleagues amused, thinking that I am as excited as a child at Christmas for the boat race. A tradition, I tell them, that I must partake in. They were more than happy to let me go, and I more than happy to take the time.

As I, apparently, have taken the stoicism out of the history professor, so too you have taken the studiousness from the surgeon. I work, of course, with efficiency and patience, but now my mind is filled with thoughts of your voice, of thoughts of seeing you again, superimposed soon over my memories that I held and still hold so dear and close to me.

I cannot believe that you will be in London. I worry I may kidnap you away and never let you return to Oxford.

But that would be improper.

My poor Will, determined to work even through shelling and injury. You truly are so beautifully stubborn. I saw many brave machinists come through the tent on my rounds, some French and others not, and all were as determined as you to get back to the front. Some complained to me, in fevered agony, that they felt themselves not brave enough to fight, and hence took on the job of working beneath and around the machines.

But never did I meet braver men than they. Than you. With no defence to go out so deep against the enemy, to lay yourself prone to fix the inner workings of a mechanical beast for others to defend themselves with. You are the bravest of all, my Will. You are remarkable.

Before you, there were few, and none that I recall with any clarity. Paris allowed for an openness of what Lithuania held in strict propriety. Coming to that city I was exposed to a life I did not anticipate would ever exist or consume me, yet I allowed it to. I enjoyed the freedom of being, entirely, as I had not in any other place before then. I tried and I enjoyed, I tried and I did not, and I never did again. Yet through all that it was you who drew me, with your distaste for absinthe and your broken cigarette, and your eyes, Will. Always your eyes.

With you I came alive, with you I realized that all the childish desires that coiled through me on some nights stalking the streets of Paris with my classmates, high on sweet smoke and warm wine, were meant to propel me to you and only you. I have never felt more contented than when you would wrap your arms around me and nuzzle so deliberately into my hair, mumbling words in a language I didn’t speak.

Oh, how I wish I had, then, to know what you said to me. I feel my face heat thinking of the things I said to you, in a susurrus of consonants and drawn out nasals in that bed. Not because I did not mean them, but because I did, love-drunk and young and wanting nothing more than to run away with an English soldier to the countryside and dream of palaces we would live in, once the war passed us by.

Always, Will. Always you.

I will restrain myself, I will be cautious, but while you have a cane to occupy your hands, I will need to seek distraction from wanting to run my hands through your hair, from touching your face, from holding you close to feel our hearts beat as one again. You English are entirely displeased by human contact in public, the hug we share will seem eternal for those watching - and they will watch - but to us… to us, Will, it will be but a reminder.

I will be patient. 

I will be good.

I will return to work, now, instead of penning you more and more pages in ridiculous giddiness for how close our meeting is.

I miss you, love. And soon. I will see you so soon.

Yours,   
Hannibal


	7. The April Letters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I do not have an answer alone, for that, when the stakes seem so very high. To let slip through our grasp what we have longed for above all else, or to pursue it at enormous risk on faith alone. Words that once defied us, as we learned to gesture to each other, laughing, now sustain us; in truth to live with words alone seems no more tenable than had our languages remained at odds. And so I ask you to answer me in as much honesty as you can, and know that I will be glad for your earnest truth whatever you write:_
> 
> _Is it too late, do you think, to seek our chateau in the country?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun trivia fact: We wrote these letters to each other, usually posted one by one so we could reply, as one might send and receive mail. However, the April 1st letters were written at the same time, not seen or discussed at any length before we both posted them to each other at the same time. :3 Note the similarities!

  


  


1 April, 1922

Hannibal,

In the blessed booze-scented silence of the train, courtesy of Oxford's not-at-all-shocking loss to Cambridge, already I write to you. Minutes apart, kilometers only, but I could not bear the thought of waiting until I arrived back to the College to speak to you in earnest.

My God, Hannibal! How beautiful you are. You have always been, then a lithe and sinuous creature wrapped in velvet and a halo of smoke, and now - I could hardly breathe so near you let alone bring myself to say the words even in whispers. I could have spent the entire afternoon watching only you - God knows I tried, every glance I could direct your way, every peek to see you still tall and splendid beside me. I could have spent more than just the day. A week. A year. A lifetime learning your radiance and never fully able to believe that you exist. Your shoulders have widened, do you know that? Your hair is paler than before, no doubt from the stresses that nearly six years - and half that at war - have put between us. There are wrinkles that crease ever so slightly beside your eyes when you smile.

I can hardly breathe even now, and I find that I cannot stop from laughing - my heart flutters as if to take flight from behind my ribs. The students sharing the car with me do not find any amusement in my delight, but more's the pity for them for not having experienced you there. You knew me on sight, didn't you? Among so many and such raucous revelry. You would have found me if you were blind.

Your carriage is so genteel, your dress refined, sleekly polished and professional. And yet there was a moment, when we caught the other watching, and your eyes held the afternoon light and you were - you are - still the boy that I love. Did you see me tremble? Could you feel it in the air's vibrations when our hands came near to touching against the railing of Hammersmith Bridge? My beautiful Parisian love, from whom only a world-wide war could separate me.

When you leaned near to me, whispering into my ear to ask whether you should be supporting the dark blue or the light, you not only made me laugh - you did so much more than that. Your words caressed my ear as tenderly as your fingers might have were we not surrounded by rowdy university boys. I felt your words’ passage skim my spine and spread hot as brandy through my belly, before they gathered lower still. Let me be crude and forgive me for it - I am eager to arrive in Oxford only because I am certain that no sooner than I close the door to my quarters, I will be unable to resist from touching myself explosively with the memory of your nearness.

My cigarette tasted of peppermint when you returned it to me. What I would not give to taste the sweetness of your lips myself and not by proxy!

I can feel, still, your arms around me when briefly we embraced. Your hands spread in that instant afforded to us, fingers pressing across my back, palms down to my hips. You held me so securely that even as I dizzied I knew I would not fall. You held me with such tenderness that all of London fell away from us. I tasted anise on my tongue, smelled heady tobacco in the air - I heard the distant strains of piano song that poured through our window for those few, those very few days that were ours.

Had you bent our mouths to meet, I could no more have stopped myself from kissing you than I could stop the beating of my heart.

I need you. Need, Hannibal, as one needs shelter and sustenance and oxygen itself. Your arms, just so, with no stiff clothes or prying eyes to make us refined. Your tongue entwined with my own until your sonorous voice parts our kiss, moaning. Let me lay my worship against every inch of your skin until I know you again by sight and sound and touch and taste.

Do not think these desperate entreaties as lack of satisfaction; I am greedy for you and yet my pleasure even now is boundless. From only standing beside you, from only being near, from a swift embrace and a shared cigarette, God! If that is all I am meant to have then I would live my life satisfied by it.

I miss you already, and in your absence, I could fill libraries with my love.

Will

  


  


1 April, 1922

Beloved, I barely have air in my lungs. I feel as though I have not breathed truly, freely, for years of my life since I last saw you, and will not breathe well again until I see you once more.

Will, you are beautiful. You are radiant. I saw you on that bridge, I saw and laughed because I had hoped to be there first, but there you were, in the early morning, fog just barely grazing the base of the bridge, standing tall and proud, your cane at your side and your hands cupped atop. For a moment I wondered if I had fallen into a dream, seeing you there. You raised your head and looked to the sky, then turned to look one way, another, down the river, though the race would not start for an hour yet.

And then you turned.

I don’t remember the pace I took to get to you but I remember the feeling of you against me, an embrace so tight I thought my lungs would burst from it. I felt your heart, beating just as quick as mine, just as warm, just as alive, and I buried a sound against your shoulder, hoping no one but you would hear. God, I have missed you. God, how I love you. Years apart after only days together and our souls sung meeting once more.

I care little for other’s opinions, I care little for social norms. I know that with you is the only time I have felt like the best of myself I can be, and that you are the only one I want to build my life with.

You still smoke those reeking cigarettes, the smell of which hung cloying in my rooms for days and days after your company left Paris. God, how I both loathed and loved that smell, thinking of you and knowing, at once, that it was all that remained of you. Until now. Until then, on that bridge, where you smiled at me and turned to the river, and told me in a soft tone that it was nice to see you again, mate.

What closer word to what we are, Will, than that?

God, how scared I was that I would write, or call, and find you married with a family. How scared I was that you would not reply at all, choosing to take the misdirected letter as merely encouragement to try again, and never speak to the man who opened your mail so rudely. How scared, Will, I was that I would never again see you, though I believed, hoped, prayed, every day, that I would.

My words fall heavy, I wish I had mellifluous language to wield as you do, to describe the feeling of your hand against mine, just there, just barely there against the railing of the bridge as I tried not to touch, and fell to temptation when you tilted your cigarette to me and I gently took it from you and placed it to my lips. The filter tasted of cinnamon and mint. Potent and warm and cool at once. It took everything in my power not to turn and take your lips against my own and have the taste overpower me. I took another drag instead and relished in passing it back.

The smoke still clings to my coat and I am wont to never wash it again, just for that.

Will you think less of me if I tell you I miss you already? More, now, that I have seen you? More, now, that I know how near you are to me, how reachable? Will you think less of me if I told you I loved you with every fibre of my being, then, and love you even more, now?

How we have changed, Will, since the last time we were together. Lines and tired limbs and responsibilities now. And yet, you, all the more beautiful for it. Your eyes arrest me, hold me captive where I stand, and I can no more move on my own accord than breathe until you tell me. I would follow you to the ends of the earth, Will, if you would take my hand and lead me there with you.

I suppose I should be the compassionate friend, pass on my condolences that the team lost to Cambridge. For the second year in a row, so I hear. I think I recall the cries of it from the finish line, as we stood on the bridge and watched the water instead, and spoke without speaking, and heard without listening. You were my entire world, in that moment watching the Thames and trying to catch your reflection in the reeking waters. I could feel you with every sense, right there, and I lamented, for a moment, my negligence of my art, that I could not sketch you that way; hair down over your eyes and lips tilted up in a smile you were trying to hide, coat collar pushed up against your neck.

Perhaps I will practice.

You are beautiful.

You are so beautiful.

Hannibal

  


  


8 April, 1922

My own Hannibal,

I am bereft of students now, in the short vac between Hilary and Trinity. Another two weeks or so allowed for my own time to spend as I see fit, which is to say in preparation for next term (were my superiors to ask) and writing to you (the truth).

It is my favorite time of year, the campus still but for birdsong that carries between ancient stone edifices, the sun not yet smothering. The wisteria has erupted all along the side of Hertford and once again attempts illicit entry into my abode through the open windows. I have pressed a portion of it for you, enclosed, which I hope retains some of the sweetness of its blooms. The Victorians believed it symbolic of enduring love in the face of heartache; others cautioned it as a warning against love that grows obsessive in its passion.

What funny patterns fate weaves into our fabrics.

They have offered me arrangements in professorial housing for next Michaelmas term, onward. I am loathe to leave my comfortable quarters at the College but the suggestion of new residence carries with it the implication of a higher station, so to reject one in turn denies the other. The offer bodes well for my future here, if indeed my future is here. 

Is it?

Your letters have been worn to pieces by my reading them; I have all but memorized their lines should they indeed fall to dust beneath the weight of my affection. When I am not preoccupied with examinations and tutoring, my thoughts return to particular words of yours, no doubt carefully chosen as all the rest despite the mutual disregard we hold for propriety in our expedient expression. You imagined us once, the dandy and the soldier, shutting up in a palais and letting the rest of the world pass us by.

Do you still?

I do.

Can so much change in three days and four nights that it affects the rest of our lives and the whole of our beings? I cannot help but believe it can, when I know how in far less time than that - an instant - something as a shell’s detonation can make changes even far more drastic and long-lasting. What has war taught us if not to love our life, in what all-too brief time it is afforded us, with absolute abandon? At the same time I wonder what we have learned from war if we do not cleave to the comforts we already have.

I do not have an answer alone, for that, when the stakes seem so very high. To let slip through our grasp what we have longed for above all else, or to pursue it at enormous risk on faith alone. Words that once defied us, as we learned to gesture to each other, laughing, now sustain us; in truth to live with words alone seems no more tenable than had our languages remained at odds. And so I ask you to answer me in as much honesty as you can, and know that I will be glad for your earnest truth whatever you write:

Is it too late, do you think, to seek our chateau in the country?

Yours always,  
Will

  


  


19 April, 1922

Sweet Will,

I have to remind myself, constantly, that the job I have here is a good one, that the people I work with are worthy and educated, that they will go far. I have to remind myself, too, that were I to go, and leave them, they would not collapse without me, they would grow strong in their knowledge and pass it on when the time comes.

I have thought, often, of what would have happened had we succeeded in telling the other what we wanted, in Paris. Would we have found a chateau? Would we have found a chalet? Would we have found even a small cabin at the foot of the Alps to live in together in happiness and peace forever?

Never once have I thought that the answer would be no. 

Never once have I thought that we would not find our happiness together, no matter where we were.

I find myself reluctant to take you from the lovely buildings and gardens and sweet wisteria by your windows. I find myself anxious, perhaps, to seek a home with you in Oxford itself, so that you may keep it, and me in turn, in a place you love so dearly.

And yet I want to show you Europe, Will. I want to show you Florence. I want to show you Prague. I want to walk with you through Barcelona and wake to see the stars in Greece.

At once I am restless and aching to settle. And the only answer in honesty that I can give you is that it is not too late for us. Not for anything we choose to do. In a heartbeat I would leave London for Oxford. In a breath I would leave Oxford for Spain. At your word, Will, I would go anywhere, so long as it is at your side, always, for as long as we have hands to hold and breaths to take.

Yours always,  
Hannibal


	8. The May Letters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I am afraid, I will admit, and I hope you do not think me weak for it. What will become of us, sharing nearness that we have only ever imagined? Will Oxford wait for me, or find another to occupy my place? Will it matter if it does, if I never return? Will we build a home somewhere new or retire here when our travels have exhausted us? Will we exhaust each other first?_

  


  


6 May, 1922

Dearest Hannibal,

It is difficult to write when one is of two minds and can settle on neither long enough to commit them to word. Forgive my delay in response; it would have been ill-considered to answer before I gave myself necessary space to consider of what we are speaking, fully and entirely.

I have laid before me an ease of life that for much of mine seemed intended for others. I love this school dearly; I love the township that surrounds it. I love the work that I do and the moment of illumination in tutoring wherein the strain of study becomes a revelation. I see the seasons move in my students as I see it move through Oxford, and it has for me been a necessarily stability that has given me grounding in the world that once burst beneath my feet.

I know not the complications of your life, or what this would present. I know that in my own were I to take sabbatical, it would be afforded to me, with the understanding that my post once vacated may be filled at some future time as the College deems it necessary. I cannot help, in my love of this place, to know that it has stood upon these same grounds for nearly seven hundred years. These stones will outlast me by centuries more; the wisteria will always bloom. It is a place untouched by time. There will forever be an Oxford.

We do not have so long.

And yet I am afraid, I will admit, and I hope you do not think me weak for it. What will become of us, sharing nearness that we have only ever imagined? Will Oxford wait for me, or find another to occupy my place? Will it matter if it does, if I never return? Will we build a home somewhere new or retire here when our travels have exhausted us? Will we exhaust each other first?

There are no answers to those questions I have posed. We cannot know unless we try. There is no valor to be won in love or war by succumbing to fear, and we are still so young. Say the word and I will submit my letter, taking indefinite leave at end of Trinity. A comfortable happiness here pales in compare to the joy with which you fill my soul.

Yours,  
Will

  


  


15 May, 1922

My Will,

All I wish in this life is your happiness. I wish, too, to be the cause of it.

Now that I know that you are well, and safe, and near, now that I know that should we have the time either of us can take a train and see the other, now that I know that you feel towards me as I do towards you, I am contented.

Should I see you thrice a year between terms? I am contented.

Should I speak to you by telephone and await your letters? I am contented.

There is no reason to rush if your heart does not feel the need to move. Europe will be here, it has survived the war, it has survived many before it. It can wait for us, we do not have to wait for it.

I love you, Will, that is the only thing of which I am certain. And I will wait for you, regardless of the time, regardless of how old and slow we grow or how the world changes around us, I will wait, and I will love. And I will be contented.

I have enclosed a train ticket not to tempt you into a decision, but to allow you the freedom of one. It does not expire, it is a return ticket to London. Should you come, we will spend time together, learn each other again, see if what we dream and how we are can correlate into the softness and kindness that we wish for each other. Should you not, I will await your letter and watch spring bloom outside the window of the hospital.

And be contented.

Our love will not be extinguished by time. And time is nothing now that I have seen you again.

Lovingly,  
Hannibal

  


  


26 May, 1922

Dearest Hannibal,

To think that only six years thence, we could not form whole sentences between us in the other’s tongue. I still cannot, in yours, but God! You write in words that I have ached to hear far longer than I have ached for easy comfort and career. And it is from you, only you, that I have wished to hear them.

How could I deny them now, when we have bared our hearts to the other and found no harm or ill-feelings befall us? How could I deny you, after so many years dreaming of nothing else? When daily I find my fingers tracing the word ‘beloved’ in the letter to that you wrote to me after the Boat Race; when daily I recall the Race itself - or rather, nothing at all about it but the electricity in the air between us. I have begged your forgiveness so many times but I will at least this once more - forgive my fear, and know that my love for you was never for a moment in doubt.

I will come to London, at end of term, three weeks from now. The long vac spans three months before Michaelmas, allowing at least that long for us to know each other as we have not had opportunity before. There will be no students to tend, no superiors to appease, and Simpkins surely will not miss my pandering in failing to draw him near. We may stay the entirety in London or venture elsewhere, I hardly care and it hardly matters.

So long as I am with you, little else does.

Yours in sudden and great anticipation,  
Will


	9. The June Letters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _There are only eight days left until the final Saturday of Trinity, on which day I will bid fond adieu to my students and take the first train for London. Allowing for time to do final room check for any stragglers (though there are never any when it comes to long vac) and await the bursar’s approval to leave (so that he might begin the arduous work of tallying up damages incurred by the students previously therein) I should arrive in time for a late dinner_.

  


  


5 June, 1922

Dearest,

It is so warm here, I find myself unable to dress in more than a buttoned shirt and a vest on top, light trousers and shoes. My patients ask me if it is my last week yet, and I smile at them and tell them I am counting the days.

My superiors were surprised to hear that I had asked for a leave so long as this, but happy to give it to me. I think, daily, of how I will greet you at the train station, how we will, as proper gentlemen take a taxi back to my home, and like proper gentlemen enter it quietly. I think of how I will find my hands tangled in your beautiful hair immediately as the door closes, how my lips will seek out yours and how I know I will moan, just softly enough for you to feel between us, when you touch me.

I digress.

I have found myself spun into a frenzy of cleaning and adjusting, arranging my home in a way that would be comfortable for two. I sit giddy as a schoolboy on the porch, smoking when it is too late for my neighbours to see and chasten me the habit, thinking of how soon, so very soon, we will be sharing one together in bed, how we will be waking together, making coffee and dinners together in the kitchen.

In truth, should we do nothing with our leave but stay here, I will find myself swallowed by that same happiness as I did six years ago now, in summer in Paris.

Soon, Will. So very soon.

Until then, I can be patient.

Once you arrive, you may have to excuse me my forward behavior. Or, perhaps, succumb to it yourself.

Yours, eager and mischievous,  
Hannibal

  


  


15 June, 1922

~~Eight days~~

Beloved Hannibal,

Eight days. There are only eight days left until the final Saturday of Trinity, on which day I will bid fond adieu to my students and take the first train for London. Allowing for time to do final room check for any stragglers (though there are never any when it comes to long vac) and await the bursar’s approval to leave (so that he might begin the arduous work of tallying up damages incurred by the students previously therein) I should arrive in time for a late dinner.

Darling, my dandy turned doctor, my Hannibal. Read it again, will you? In eight days I will join you for dinner.

I would beg of you to make reservations for us, but you know as well as I that whatever plans we make will fall by the wayside when we return to your home to leave my things. I will drop my bags there, then we will drop our clothes, then we will drop ourselves into bed and I pray we will not emerge for days after. My God, look at that scribbling - do you see what you have done to me? Once I wrote to you in finest prose and now I’m little better than any other boy at university, near-animal in my shameless need for this.

For you.

To feel your hands against my face and to pull your body against my own.

To see your beauty spread bare before me as I never imagined I might again and to ravage you until our languages are once again sundered from us and we communicate in breathless gasps and wordless moans.

You have, unbeknownst to them by name or cause of course, gained enormous favor among the students that I tutor. I can no more concentrate on their term papers than they can resist the temptation of summer’s freedom, and so their marks have been overwhelmingly positive compared to the usual stringency with which I grade. I pay it no mind nor ill-feelings - they are clever boys, all, often too much so for their own good.

And so they will go, with pride in their work, mostly well done, and I will wave them off. And so I will ~~go down~~ come up to you and then…

And then.

Yours, in but a moment more,  
Will

PS: Do not fret overmuch about the accommodations. I assure you I will not notice them at all.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Kiss me,” asks Will, smile widening, “just as you did in Paris.”_

The train is due to arrive just after seven, and Hannibal continues to check his watch, to measure it by the large clock at the station, every five minutes on average regardless of it being only half past six.

The air is warm still, but London does not feel so drowsy now that dusk is on its way. Hannibal spent the better part of the day forcing himself still, forcing himself calm. He had gone to buy groceries to last them the week, at least - he bought wine, some whiskey, on a whim, a bottle of absinthe. Cigarettes. Chocolate. He had invested in ice.

Now he waits, hoping that his thought to create a cold soup for dinner will be well met, when they, inevitably, do not immediately eat it upon coming home, if at all today.

Hannibal shifts and paces, to the end of the station, back again, and stops, hat in his hands. He again checks his watch. A whistle blows and his heart skips a beat, enough to force him to take a breath. He watches the grand machine, shining bright, slow into the station and twists his hat again. And again.

The doors open and a number of young men stumble forth, filling the station with raucous laughter, shoving each other as they go. From a car further down, a school song erupts, boozy intonations off-key and rich with delight in their newfound freedom. Through the crowd, Hannibal rises a little to his toes, and the floor seems to give way beneath him as a man emerges, nearly as young as all the rest, but with a cane and careful steps in the wake of youthful exuberance.

Will has his own, though, in bright blue eyes that shine enormous through his glasses.

He breathes a laugh, helpless already to see Hannibal there awaiting him, frantic anticipation giving way to a relieved smile before he parts the crowd to come closer. Letting his bag slip from his fingers, removing his hat, Will stumbles as he takes a step and slings an arm around Hannibal’s neck, the other grasping his cane. Firm arms surround and steady him, and he buries his face against Hannibal’s throat for the instant they have just so.

Will laughs again as he whispers, “I’m shaking.”

“As am I.” Hannibal’s words are a breath, nothing more, and then he lets Will go. Reluctantly, slowly, because he knows that it is just for now. He knows that it is not for long. He knows that once they leave the station, once they take the taxi, once they’re home…

“I hope the trip was pleasant,” Hannibal says instead, trying to right his voice to stoic neutrality once more, though his smile comes through clear as day at the corners of his eyes, within his eyes themselves as they shine in delight at having Will so near.

“The company was wanting,” Will replies, and they share a grin, free and happy to be. Hannibal bends to take his friend’s bag. No one pays them mind, all too busy meeting friends on the train or on the station, family members hugging their sons close, welcoming them home for the summer. Boys and girls of all ages laughing and smiling and enjoying their summer as Hannibal and Will slip quietly and slowly away to find a taxi.

“I don’t live far,” Hannibal says, accent curling stronger in his excitement, in his joy at being here, with Will, finally. He dictates the address to their driver and settles back, resisting, with everything he has, touching Will’s hand that rests so close between them.

What they cannot have in touch, Will takes in sight instead. He leans back against the door of the car, one hand fidgeting nervous against his cane, and studies at starved length the man who watches him in turn.

His Hannibal is so tall, so stately, in his eyes a dancing amusement that only dares touch his lips before he looks out the window as if shy. For a moment Will nearly doubts that this can be the same wanton boy he met in Montmartre so long ago, until Hannibal rests his elbow against the door and his hand against his chin. In the bend of his wrist and the touch of fingertips to lips, a coyness that pulls Will’s lips apart in gentle awe before he finally looks away himself, adjusting his glasses.

“Lifetimes ago,” Will says, as London passes by beside him. “And no time at all.”

“With much more before us,” adds Hannibal, and neither dare say more. The proximity enough is intoxicating; they had no capability for words six years prior and though they have them now, there is no need. It is beyond comprehension that after everything, after war itself -

“We are here,” Hannibal tells the driver, to Will’s surprise, brow lifting as he peers to the tree-lined streets and elegant buildings behind.

“A far cry indeed,” allows Will, fumbling for his billfold.

Hannibal just makes a sound, small, in his throat, and covers the fare on his own, thanking the driver and smiling to Will. He is first from the car and goes around to the trunk to get the bag, as Will gets out on his side.

The street is quiet and now that dusk has fallen, people are out walking their dogs without the pain of the heat of the day. Hannibal waves to someone, says a few words to them, and goes on towards the small house that sits against a well-manicured lawn and beautifully flowering shrubs.

Hannibal unlocks the door without a word, turns to see Will close behind him, a smile shared, before Will politely turns to take in the street, the outside of the house neither will see for the next few days as they explore within it. The house is quiet inside, a lamp on in the living room to welcome them home. Hannibal places Will’s bag just inside the door before welcoming him in, allowing his eyes to close as he turns his nose against Will’s hair as he passes, a gentle nuzzle.

Then he closes the door.

Will’s throat clicks as he swallows. He grasps his cane tighter to stop his trembling, gaze uplifting to the high ceilings, taking in the expanse of well-appointed space. It is here, among belle curves and floral furniture, rich jewel tones and vast space, it here where the letters were written that have altogether altered his life, it is here to which his own were sent and read, it is here in which Hannibal lives, and eats, and sleeps, and breathes. A gentle shake of his head is all Will can manage before careful fingers take his hat from his hand to hang it, and Will turns.

Hannibal, too, slowly comes to face him again. He takes a step nearer, each of them as nervous as the other until a laugh breaks free, shared, like a galloping roll of thunder in a summer storm that precludes the electric charge in the air.

“I can’t speak,” Will says, abashed, and ducking his head in a grin. His eyes alight again to Hannibal. “I can hardly breathe, I don’t -”

“Will,” Hannibal says, gently, and Will tastes absinthe on his tongue.

“Let me start again,” asks Will. He lifts his free hand to place quaking to Hannibal’s cheek and sighs softly. “Bonjour.”

Hannibal’s smile spreads wide, bright, narrowing his eyes and allowing his teeth to show white beneath warm pink lips.

“Bonjour,” he whispers back, bringing a hand up to stroke against Will’s cheek, under his eye, through his hair and tickling against the rim of his ear. “Yesterday, I would have said _tu me manques, mon cher_. It would have been true for every day but today.”

Will’s laugh is gentle, nervous. He sets his cane against the wall with a quiet click, eyes never leaving Hannibal as he steps closer and presses his free hand up against Hannibal’s own.

“I don’t know what that means,” he says, and Hannibal grins wider, a brief brightness before it settles to something much more fond, much more gentle.

“‘You are missing for me’,” Hannibal translates. “But not anymore.”

“No,” Will laughs, just a flutter of sound as his fingers curl tighter against Hannibal’s own. “No, God, we’ve done enough of that for many lifetimes.”

He closes his eyes, if only to feel the constancy of contact. Hannibal does not vanish, as he does in dreams. His hand is still there, steady, not Will’s own once sweet delirium has passed. Will turns his mouth against Hannibal’s palm and sighs, allowing his fingers to slip to Hannibal’s neck and finally grasp firm the collar of his shirt.

“Kiss me,” asks Will, smile widening, “just as you did in Paris.”

Hannibal just says something else, another warm murmur in French, before framing Will’s face and leaning in. 

It is intoxicating, warm and familiar and yet entirely, blissfully new. Hannibal breaks free to take a breath, and when he kisses Will once more it is with a heat slowly boiling to mirror that of Paris. His lips part and Will’s part beneath them, he sighs, and Will laughs as he sighs too. And then Hannibal turns his shoulders to the wall and presses back hard and moans, sweet and soft, as Will steps closer and closes his eyes and they’re there. They are there, in Paris once more, kissing sloppy and loose against the wall of a bar.

Hannibal makes a small sound and pulls back, nuzzling against Will, holding him close, laughing against him.

“You’re here,” he breathes. “God, Will, you’re _here_...”

Will strokes a hand across Hannibal’s hair, the other still holding fast to his lapel, and presses in again to feel their mouths entangle. He leans into Hannibal, pushing him to the wall, their kiss twisting ecstatic until his lungs burn and he parts with a moan and sets their brows together.

“There has been no one since then,” Will confesses, heart jerking so hard he’s dizzy with it. “No one, Hannibal, I have wanted no one else but you.”

Strong hands set to his waist and pull their bodies flush, as their lips collide, their knees nearly give way beneath them. Fate has moved them together, again and again, from a meeting of eyes in a bar to a misplaced letter. They could no more fight it than the tide could fight the moon, resisting the shore that insists on its presence. So they move, a wave of motion that sparks heat between clutching hands and rocking hips, between gasping kisses and spreading through flushed cheeks.

When another kiss threatens to shake them both to collapse, Will allows it. He tugs Hannibal with him, they turn together, and the floor itself grounds them as Hannibal lowers himself and Will follows, laughing against his mouth. So many months of writing, so many years apart, and all the sweeter now for their longing.

“Let me see you,” Will grins, snaring his bottom lip between his teeth as he casts his glasses to the floor beside them. The floral carpet appears as a bed of blossoms beneath his Hannibal, whose eyes narrow in delight. “You know what I’m saying now,” he teases, “don’t pretend as if you do not.”

“ _Je ne comprende pas_ ,” Hannibal replies to a delighted sound from Will before he kisses him again. Hannibal lets his hands slip down from his hair to his back, strong as before, beautifully curved as Will arches and bends against him, seeking kisses and breath both, and Hannibal gives them to him.

They are just out of the corridor, just far enough that Hannibal can see the living room beyond. He arches his neck, moans when Will presses his lips insistent to Hannibal’s throat then, instead, and bites his lip.

“Lord, I’ve missed you,” he breathes. He shifts, just enough for Will to feel, and catches his hand to bring it down to the buttons on his vest for Will to undo. Eyes hooded and down to watch, his smile widens when Will looks up and Hannibal immediately kisses him, seeking and soft, smiling almost too much to keep them together. Beneath Will, Hannibal spreads his legs, draws up his knees. 

“Still as wanton as in Paris, I assure you,” Hannibal breathes, letting his own fingers slip down to work Will’s shirt from his pants, working beneath his suspenders to slowly pry them down his shoulders, over his arms, smiling as Will works his hands free of the loops and continues baring Hannibal. “And still entirely yours, since then.”

“And now?” Will grins, as his teeth press to his bottom lip and he spreads Hannibal’s shirt and vest open, palms spanning across his skin.

“Yours, always,” answers Hannibal. He arches, shivering, as Will tugs against the thick hair on his chest, and Will makes no effort to restrain the moan that spills forth, with soft curls caught between his fingers.

“And I,” he agrees, taking in the width and breadth of the man beneath him. Caught between worlds, in the strange space between then and now. “Never had I seen someone so striking, nor have I since. Beautiful and decadent dandy, you might have had anyone -”

“I did not want anyone. Only my soldier, brave Will,” Hannibal whispers. Will relents his touch only so long as it takes for Hannibal to divest him of his shirt, and he lunges to another kiss, their chests bare together, hips rocking in clumsy tandem. With ardent lips and teeth and tongue, Will turns Hannibal’s head aside and seeks his throat, no longer the quiet, solemn lecturer but himself, truly, a self too long hidden and now erupting as if they were spring incarnate.

Will grasps Hannibal’s thigh, still clad, and thumbs across the spot where he remembers there is a birthmark. He remembers too the way Hannibal’s jaw presses to his cheek when Will traps his pulse beneath a kiss. He remembers the way Hannibal pulls his hair enough to sprinkle goosepimples rippling across his skin. He remembers because he has never forgotten, because he has thought of nothing else.

Adjusting to allow for the stiffness of his leg, Will ducks his head and pushes his body lower. Sighing against Hannibal’s chest, he turns his cheek to feel the cottony curls against his skin, and for a moment rests there, just there. Hannibal’s heart thuds faithful and steady beneath him, and of all the knowledge and music and theatre with which Will has been surrounded, he is certain that he has never heard a more wondrous and unlikely sound than this.

“All the times I whispered worship to your skin,” Will murmurs, “I imagined that you knew the meaning, though the language was foreign. And yet I want nothing more than to tell you again, and again, for the rest of our lives, that I love you.”

Hannibal draws a hand through Will's hair, scratching lightly at his scalp, tugging the warm curls straight before releasing them. He thinks of Paris, of the accented and strange words Will whispered in his sleep, mumbled against Hannibal’s back when he slowly pushed into him. He thinks of how they felt, almost tasted, good.

The meaning was clear enough.

"I knew," Hannibal tells him. "I knew and hoped you knew I repeated them to you in my own languages." Hannibal’s smile is wide, bright, and when Will looks at him again, Hannibal’s eyes narrow and he snares Will close to kiss him deeply. 

"Beautiful man," he murmurs. "I cannot wait to learn you by heart."

Will laughs, then, that lovely nervous thing, and Hannibal hums, keeping him from ducking his head so temptingly against him once more.

"Could I tempt you to the bedroom?" he asks, amusement tilting his tone. "It is only several steps down the hall."

“And you already so close,” Will complains, nuzzling against Hannibal’s cheek and draping kisses against his jaw. “I don’t know that I could stand it.”

“To move just there?” Hannibal teases. Will hums affirmative and disapproving all at once, and Hannibal grasps his face in hands, grinning so wide his eyes are all but closed with it. They squeeze to kiss, again, little pecks over and over until finally Hannibal’s smile breaks to a laugh and Will watches, rapt, the luminous pleasure that spreads over his face.

It is a flurry of French then that falls upon his ears then and Will ducks his head with a shiver, relenting as he is rolled to his side and Hannibal frees himself from beneath. It is a gentle scolding, unmistakably fond, just as Hannibal would when they managed to communicate that Will would rather sleep than eat, just as when Will would wash his clothes in the sink and spill soap across the floor. Will accepts it all, wrapped around him like a familiar blanket - curling consonants and throaty vowels, a cluck of tongue as Hannibal stands half-bared and offers him a hand, smiling.

“Marvelous creature,” murmurs Will, waving away the offer of help to attempt pushing himself to his feet instead. A grimace draws sharp lines of pain when stripped muscles snare too tight, but Hannibal does not intercede. The pain cuts through the warmth of memory, a reminder that no longer can Will hoist Hannibal to the wall and pin him there, no longer can they give chase around spaces too small, hurtling pillows in the other’s path before collapsing upon them laughing.

They have changed, since then.

And yet still they are together.

“Please,” Will asks, reaching again for Hannibal to accept his help.

“Stubborn man,” Hannibal praises. They lean together, Will’s arms around Hannibal’s shoulders, Hannibal’s hands against his chest. His suspenders hang against his legs as Will lets himself be guided backward and supported both, concentrating on no more than the heat of Hannibal’s throat beneath his mouth as he is lead to the bedroom.

Or nearly so, anyway.

“Wait,” Will laughs, “wait.” He tilts his head aside, grinning, as Hannibal kisses his cheek. “Will you bring me my things, my cane? I want no reason for either of us to leave your room once we’re there.”

Hannibal murmurs something warm and fond against Will’s cheek and says nothing more on the matter, guiding them further into the bedroom and sitting Will down on the big bed. He kneels before him, kissing against Will’s lips, down his throat, to his collarbone, lower still to his chest to take a nipple between sharp teeth and gently tug until Will moans and grasps his hair.

“My bag,” he whispers. “My cane… Hannibal, please -”

Hannibal just draws his tongue flat and wide over Will’s nipple to feel him shiver, to feel the way his fingers tighten in his hair. He kisses against WIll’s chest, adoring, gentle, and then finally deigns to stand, bending to kiss Will once more before sauntering from the room to gather what Will wants.

When he returns, Will has turned on the light at the bedside, has kicked off his shoes to the ground and worked his socks within. In just his pants now, suspenders hanging loose around him, he grins from the bed and Hannibal’s breath just stops for a moment.

He thinks of this beautiful man, younger, brighter, hair cropped short and eyes narrowed in mischievous pleasure, sitting in the dusty sunlight of the attic room in Paris. Blissfully naked, cigarette between his teeth as he searched seemingly mindlessly through his bag before pulling out a mangled and bent postcard with the English countryside painted in faded watercolor.

Hardly a word of shared language between them then, and even then Will had known.

Now Hannibal comes closer, setting the bag to the bed and the cane to the wall and gathers Will close to kiss him deep. Will slides his hands through Hannibal’s hair, glossy strands parting sleek. He lets himself be moved, back further onto the bed, wriggling to lay flat across its width, as Hannibal chases him with hands and mouth and body.

“God,” Will laughs, eyes closing beneath his arm as Hannibal spans a wide hand along his stomach, up to his chest. “What will we do with so much space in this bed? The last -”

“Hardly enough room for two,” Hannibal says, gently removing Will’s arm from over his eyes. Their gazes meet, smiling. “It didn’t matter when we laid as one instead.”

Will lifts a hand to the man propped above him and follows the contour of Hannibal’s cheek with his fingertips, down to his chin and past the hollow in his throat. Along his shoulder and down the back of his arm, still lean but stronger now, muscles shadowed along their curves in the dim golden light. Their ardor beats a relentless rhythm between them, but there is no longer the sense of urgency that once drove them together every time their bodies were capable. They need not rush now. They should not, when there is so much to learn anew about the other.

Their gazes held, Will allows his exploration lower still, to slender waist and narrow hips. He curls a finger beneath the top of Hannibal’s trousers, and skims his touch to the front where a path of dark hair disappears promisingly beneath. Will’s smile is small, gentled by the curiosity of nostalgia and the heat that swells almost painfully within his chest.

“I don’t care if I never see Oxford again,” he whispers, he grins, he laughs out loud, helpless. “May I?” He asks, as he did once to a puzzled look and then a quick nod, his fingers working loose the button in a gentle turn.

Hannibal’s arms tremble as Will works his pants open, he keeps his eyes on the man beneath him as though he cannot believe Will is here, here and his and safe and perfect. God, how he had missed Will when his company had gone away. Quick kisses on the porch, hands against Hannibal’s cheeks and through his hair and a smattering of brisk English that Hannibal knew not the meaning of. Words repeated over and over as Hannibal shook his head and in quick French begged Will to stay.

God, they were young then.

The war has aged them more in six years than a lifetime could. As long as they spend it together, Hannibal hardly cares. He ducks his head when Will slips a hand around the back of his pants to cup his ass in his hands, pressing down against the warm flesh through thin silk to push Hannibal’s pants down lower. Will snorts softly and Hannibal lifts an elegant brow.

“Silk?”

“Would you have me any other way?”

“Bare.”

“Then work for it, dear Will, the power is with you to make me so.”

Will grasps firmly the pert, plush curve of his backside, and he grins as Hannibal’s voice breaks in a shuddering moan. That sound, he knows. That sound, he could not forget for the whole of his life. Will squeezes again and sets his other hand beneath Hannibal’s chin to lift it when he ducks his head, raising their eyes to meet again.

He pushes upward to turn Hannibal to the bed instead. Tugging his trousers free, Will’s breath hitches at the sight of scarlet silk clinging sleek to pale skin, the rigid outline of his cock standing stiff beneath. Hannibal pushes his pants to the floor with his toes and grips Will’s hair as he kisses through the hair on his chest to seek a dark little nipple and suckle it hard.

Loosening his lips, damp, when Hannibal arches with a whimper beneath him, Will presses firm kisses across Hannibal’s soft stomach. He catches his teeth against soft skin, nibbling lower still, seeking with rooting nuzzles and tugging kisses, and he hooks his fingers into the waistband of his shorts to bare him. The rich masculine scent of him, sweat and earthy sweetness, sends Will’s senses reeling. Hannibal’s cock lays heavy against his belly, the tip dark and slick where it peeks from beneath his foreskin.

“Of course they’re red,” he laughs, as Hannibal lifts his hips and Will removes the crimson silk from beneath him. “I should have known that no dull suits could replace your peacock feathers. Resplendent, radiant bird,” sighs Will, framing the sharp rises of Hannibal’s hips with his hands as he lowers his head and takes him into his mouth with a groan.

Hannibal’s lips part and he takes a sharp breath before arching his neck and holding it. Even then he had been astounded by the beauty of Will’s mouth, bowed lips and large teeth and dimples so deep Hannibal could not help but kiss them, every time they appeared. And then he had taken Hannibal like this, entirely shameless and perfect, and Hannibal had moaned so loudly his friend struck the floor of their room with the broom handle to make him stop.

And now, now Hannibal moans as loudly, as unrestrained as then, uncaring for the neighbours or propriety - he had never been ashamed of his pleasure, had never been ashamed of it with Will, and now it is hardly any different. He drops a hand over his eyes, the other down to grasp Will’s hair and rock gently up into the welcoming heat and slick of Will’s mouth.

“Extraordinary,” Hannibal whispers. “Sinful, stunning thing - I love you.”

Never before Hannibal had Will such allowance to know another this way, let alone himself. England’s stoic restraint and tempered nature, as far from libertine Paris as could be, kept his desires muted but for those few days they shared together, and it is a relief not only of the body but of the spirit to find that freedom again. There is no shame in this, no lingering guilt that his upbringing should have instilled in him.

With Hannibal, there has always been, there will always be only beauty.

His cock stretches Will’s lips as he rocks upward, thickened heavy against his tongue. Unpracticed, always and certainly by compare to the decadent creature beneath him, Will makes up for skill with unbound enthusiasm. Pressing down until coarse curls tickle his nose, he breathes deep the heady scent of the man he loves and hollows his cheeks, sucking from base to tip and struggling only not to smile as Hannibal keens sweet delight towards the ceiling. Will splays a hand across his stomach to feel its muscles tighten, his hum reverberating through taut flesh when Hannibal’s fingers jerk tighter in his hair.

Hannibal’s entire body sings with this, trembling and taut and perfect as Will sucks against him. Never since Will has he had another. Before, plenty, drunken nights and too many limbs and whispered promises that came to nothing in the morning. But Will… beautiful, beautiful Will.

That promise Hannibal never broke.

“Will,” Hannibal’s voice purrs accented and deep, enough to draw a shiver from the man sucking him, bringing him such pleasure that Hannibal’s mind falls almost entirely blank but for thoughts of how they can have this, now, together. “Will, please -”

He glances upward, blue eyes bright and Hannibal’s cock standing stiff between his parted lips, flushed red and damp. Hannibal sets his hand between his teeth to stop himself from losing control entirely; tears heat his eyes and only when he’s caught his breath does he turn a palm to wipe them away with a little laugh. Taking him in hand, Will follows the path of Hannibal’s trembling body, easing it again with kisses, settling him until their mouths meet in a breathless tangle.

Will grasps a bare thigh and brings it high, hand hooked beneath Hannibal’s knee. Rocking down against him, sober grey tweed rubs blissful friction between them until Will tilts away from Hannibal’s kiss to moan. He reaches between their bodies to unfasten his trousers, sliding them only low enough to free his aching length. He brings his hand up again to spit into his palm but finds the motion stopped by elegant fingers around his wrist.

The look that Hannibal conveys is enough that Will knows his motions, however genuine in passion, have been seen through entirely. His brow creases before he eases it with a laugh, a final attempt to seem as though he is not at all nervous. Not at all embarrassed. Not at all afraid, deeply afraid, to let himself be seen bare.

“Hannibal,” he cautions, words faltering. He presses his tongue to part his lips and shakes his head a little, curling their fingers together.

Hannibal turns his face against Will’s, a gentle nuzzling, and just breathes, waits for Will’s breathing to slow down to match. He keeps hold of Will’s hand, and carefully seeks with the other down over his back, to the waistband of his pants and back up again, an easing, a gentle tenderness until Will snorts gently and raises his eyes and Hannibal just smiles.

“Let me see you,” he asks softly, drawing his knuckles over Will’s cheek, his thumb across wet lips. “You wear bravery yet hide it as shame, you should not. You are remarkable, Will.”

Will lets his eyes close. He turns to Hannibal’s hand and nestles his cheek there, his hand cupped atop, and when he breathes again it’s with a little sound, near a laugh but not quite.

“Is it shame that I would rather you still think me beautiful?”

“There is nothing that would have me think anything less,” Hannibal tells him, thumb working soft and warm beneath Will’s eye, over his cheek, to the corner of his mouth. He loves him. Had he found Will with an amputated limb, shrapnel cuts across his face, he would not have jerked back, would not have changed his mind. It is true that Hannibal first fell in love with the beautiful grin and bright eyes, but those eyes have not changed, that grin is just as wide.

“I love you,” Hannibal tells him.

Will’s smile spreads, the purred promise in those words enough that he would give the world to Hannibal if he asked it, just to hear them again. He sinks a long kiss to Hannibal’s fingertips as they trace his lips, and sighs that he loves him, too. Relinquishing himself to the warm arms that surround him and turn his back to the bed, Will makes good on his own promise, that he would follow Hannibal anywhere, for anything. He has voluntarily, happily shed a life hard-won for one far greater; surely, Will tells himself, he can do something so simple now as shed his pants.

His eyes narrow a little, watching Hannibal once more propped above him, pleasure in his look despite his solemnity in showing himself this way. Slender fingers follow the contours of his chest as Will works loose his trousers, sliding them free along with his pants beneath. Each touch of fingertips, only distantly felt, presses to the little scars that dot his body, bits of metal from the blast leaving marks across his skin.

Hannibal explores Will’s body anew, finding the places he did not know in Paris and committing them to memory. Every little mark gets a kiss, soft and warm, against it, a nuzzle to remind Will of his promise, and prove that he will never break it. He is beautiful, even scarred, perhaps even made more beautiful by them. Hannibal worships him with sighs and kisses, gentle nosing against the deeper marks, fingertips tickling along the next even before he is finished devoting his attention to the ones he is on.

He can see the leg Will bends a certain way, pushing down to the bed not from pain but to hide himself, to keep that personally perceived ugliness away from Hannibal’s gentle eyes.

He will get to it, slowly, there is no rush between them now with night fallen outside and days and weeks and months to spend together. Years and years, if both are honest. The thought fills Hannibal with endless warmth. Slowly, gently, he makes his way to Will’s hip, lips nipping light against the pale skin there, head turning to nuzzle with a moan against the wiry hair at the base of Will’s cock. Hannibal kisses there, just once, and then slips his hands beneath Will to gently arch his hips, to slowly turn him enough to see.

The scar is deep, skin grafted over it healed, now, but darker than the rest. Hannibal watches, for a moment, just watches. He imagines the pain Will would have been in, leg torn this way, fearing that he would not finish fixing the gun more than the fact that he could lose his limb. He thinks of how Will would have woken, whole but sore, damaged but not broken, and bends to press his lips to the scar tissue, eyes closed in reverence and adoration.

Will swallows back a sound, allowing nothing but the click of his throat, tight. Hannibal’s elegant mouth, its softness and shape so intimately familiar, touches again and again to gnarled skin. Nerves twitch deep within, sharp static flickers that raise up from memory the blast itself, the debridements that followed, skin and muscle stripped away to prevent seemingly inevitable infection that by some blessing of luck and surgical skill evaded him. Will sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and watches silently the ceaseless and genuine adoration of this new reality.

If he focuses hard, he imagines he can feel Hannibal's lips, their heat and tenderness. Perhaps he can, a little, and despite himself he manages a smile.

Were it not for the war, he would still be whole. He could run the way he once loved, stand at the podium without the pain of cramps snarling him to shaking. He could hoist Hannibal to the wall and keep him there, carry him with his lanky legs wrapped around Will’s waist.

And yet, were it not for the war, he would not have Hannibal at all, forever seeking for the missing piece to make himself whole.

"My soldier," Hannibal whispers, and Will shivers, grinning at the words. "It suits you, I think, to defy your stiff English humility and wear your bravery outward."

"Shall I dig up my uniform again as well?" Will teases, hiding his eyes beneath his arm - though peeking still - as Hannibal traces a sinuous curve of uneven skin with his tongue. "Huffing as though it were unpleasant to your sensibilities. Nonsense. You loved it."

“I altered it before you left, it was two sizes too big for you.”

“I know, I could hardly walk,” Will laughs, and then he finds he can’t stop laughing, thinking back on how hard his friends had laughed that he suddenly had tailored jodhpurs and a well-fitted shirt. He laughs and Hannibal turns his face against Will’s leg and hums his pleasure in hearing it. He is beautiful. He is so beautiful. 

“Despite that, you were _incredibly_ fetching in your uniform. I could barely take my eyes off you.”

“I know.”

Hannibal shifts to kiss Will again, pressing him to the bed with the weight of his body, one hand cupping Will’s cheek and stroking beneath his eye, the other down to shift Will’s knees higher, rocking down against him until the friction has them both panting, lips parted but still close, brushing with every arch and turn between them.

As easily as the turn of a hand dissipates cigarette smoke, so does their nearness part the clouds that darkened Will's eyes, revealing blue sky instead. He digs a heel into the bed for traction, he can hardly sustain a kiss for the the wide smile he cannot help. With a hand holding firm to Hannibal's hair, he follows the curve of his spine with the other and slips his fingers between his cheeks, eyes hooding when he finds heat beneath his fingertips and Hannibal moans wanton.

Gripping the sheets on either side of Will's head, Hannibal thrusts downward as Will thrusts up. It is a joyful rutting, too eager to feel the other's passion tightening with every turn of hip to seek anything more. And they need not - they have each other, they are here, and all the time in the world is theirs for the taking.

Will circles his finger against Hannibal's opening, stroking wrinkled skin slick with sweat and watching as he trembles above him. Will's belly is coiled tight, his release so near that only by sheer stubbornness does he suppress himself from finishing swift and eager as a schoolboy.

"God I love you," he whispers, voice rough, mouth slack with breathless panting as Hannibal sits astride him, their cocks pushing hard into the other's belly. "Come for me, lovely, let me see."

And there, there is a particular pitch, a tone and tenor, that though the words then were unfamiliar, Hannibal knows by heart.

He shivers, ducking his head to press his lips to Will’s throat, feeling his pulse quick. He curls his fists in the sheets and arches back against Will’s hand, down against his cock, voice hitching as he whispers for Will to tell him again, again, until Hannibal’s entire body tenses, lips parted on a helpless sound, and he comes, hot and thick between them.

So many words shared between them that neither knew the meaning of, but the tone was always enough, the softness, the rough throatiness, everything, all of it. Hannibal smiles, then, turning his nose just behind Will’s ear and murmuring to him in French the filthy things he wants to do to him, how wantonly he will bend for Will, how happily he will ride him, how they will share a bath and find themselves filthier than when they entered. Over and over, the lyrical language pouring thick like caramel against Will’s skin as Hannibal slips his hand between them in the mess and strokes Will to his own release.

Will can do nothing more than listen, than cling to Hannibal with arms around his broad shoulders to keep him close, every word known to him by heart and sensation, every word adoring. He gasps, arching suddenly, a trembling laugh on his lips as he seeks a clumsy kiss. Quivering fingers set to Hannibal's cheeks as they slowly rock to stillness, both sticky with sweat and semen, both flushed, lank locks clinging to their brows.

"My love," Will whispers, smoothing back Hannibal's hair from his face. "My Hannibal. I love you."

As they turn to their sides, limbs entangling, Hannibal tells him the same - in English and in French, in Lithuanian too, which tugs another laugh from Will, charmed and delighted. Where they will go once they exhaust this bed to breaking is still undecided, but what is known and promised in every fond kiss they share is that wherever calls to them, they will go together.

Always, always together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading and for falling in love with these two as much as we did. There are so many more stories to tell, in the past and in the present, and we hope you'll join us for those, too.
> 
> The Epistolary Series: Paris begins on Thursday.


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